The Face of Jesus

By David Drury

 

The members of my Wednesday night “Tough Questions” group have asked the following questions: “What was Jesus’ natural complexion?  What did Jesus look like?”

 

Here was my 2 cents:

 

There was an amazing project done several years ago to study what the face of Jesus looked like.  Of course, we don’t know what Jesus actually looked like.  None of his disciples was a painter, apparently.  No photographs were taken (strike that—they didn’t even exist yet).  And we don’t have his skeleton (of course).

 

Our image of Jesus is largely shaped by what artists from how our own cultures have painted him—which is usually: just like us but taller and better looking!

 

But archeologists DO now know roughly what most men in the time of Jesus in Israel looked like through facial structures and such.  About 4 years ago there was an amazing project to “develop the average face” of a man from Jesus’ time and home.  Of course, his face could look nothing like this at all but this is what the average guy in his day looked liked (and Jesus was said not to stand out from the crowd at all).

 

Here it is:

 

You can read how they came up with this through forensic science at Popular Mechanic’s magazine: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/1282186.html.

 

This picture has been helpful for me to see Jesus as someone that looked quite different from me—someone of another race!  I know that’s obvious in print but actually “seeing” the face is even more helpful for me.

 

 “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” - Isaiah 53:2b

 

 

 

© 2005 by David Drury